A full 18 years after 2007’s Halo 3 — the third massively popular entry in the flagship Xbox franchise — launched, a build of one of its story campaign’s most famous cut levels has been found. And soon, you might actually be able to play it.
The mission in question is Forerunner City (also known as Lost City) — a scrapped urban level that eventually got merged with another cut mission, Alpine, to become the bombastic stage The Covenant that made it into the full release. A script draft from Bungie’s Halo 3 design lead Rob Stokes and comments from environment artist Vic DeLeon suggest that narratively, Forerunner City would have shown players elements of Forerunner culture and daily life as they battled Covenant and Flood forces through its streets with the help of both human and alien Elite allies.
It would be natural to assume the level was discovered in an old Halo 3 build; fascinatingly, though, it was actually found in an early pre-release version of Halo Studios’ (formerly 343 Industries) 2012 follow-up Halo 4. The prolific Halo mod author RejectedShotgun revealed this on Saturday afternoon, crediting Zoephie (@Just_Zoephie) of the fan-run preservationist group The Reclamation Initiative with the monumental find.
I’ve cleaned up the map and have fixed all the thousands of errors and re-UVed everything. The map now supports AI pathfinding and lightmapping.In the future I’m hoping to fully rework the level into a clean and playable mod from start to finish. pic.twitter.com/fZQiefeFOoMay 3, 2025
“Halo 3’s famous cut mission, Lost City or Forerunner City, has been discovered in an early build of Halo 4 of all places. @Just_Zoephie from the Reclaimation Initiative, the same group who got Halo MegaBloks running, just recently made the discovery,” RejectedShotgun wrote. The post itself was accompanied by a plethora of screenshots and some gameplay footage that you can watch in the embed above.
“I’ve cleaned up the map and have fixed all the thousands of errors and re-UVed everything,” he continued. “The map now supports AI pathfinding and lightmapping. In the future I’m hoping to fully rework the level into a clean and playable mod from start to finish.”
At first, I thought it was strange that Forerunner City was discovered in Halo 4, but after giving it some thought it actually made quite a bit of sense. The Forerunner world Requiem that the game is set on is a Shield World designed to shelter against the galaxy-wiping devastation of the Halo rings and has an extensive network of Forerunner structures and facilities; I suspect the development team was closely referencing and taking heavy inspiration from Forerunner City’s sprawling urban design, as many similar to it feature in Halo 4’s campaign.
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As shown above, RejectedShotgun has confirmed that he’s planning to completely overhaul the experience into a full, playable mission with an upcoming mod — likely designing it using the aforementioned rough draft script as a guideline. Notably, though, the basic version of the map that’s been cleaned and bugfixed is also publicly available on his GitHub page now for those that want to explore it as is or create their own project with it.
Overall, this was an incredibly cool discovery, and I can’t wait to play through RejectedShotgun’s modded restoration of the level once it’s made and released for The Master Chief Collection (MCC). Sadly, Xbox players won’t be able to check it out since modding isn’t supported for the MCC on console, but folks that own it on Steam on Windows PC will be able to (the mod may work on the Xbox Game Pass-compatible version available through the Xbox PC app, too, but it hasn’t been confirmed that it will).
Speaking of the MCC on Steam, the collection is actually a colossal 75% off right now on Valve’s PC gaming platform, and is a must-play whether you’re a longtime Halo player or a newcomer to the series. For just $10 at the moment (usually $40), it gives you access to Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4 — all of which have been retooled to run well on modern systems and with modern resolutions.
Six full Halo games and two remasters plus all of their campaign, multiplayer, and Forge level-editing content for less than the price of a meal is, frankly, an incredible deal, so make sure to take advantage of it if you don’t have the MCC already. There’s no better way to get your hands on many of the best Xbox games ever made.
